Modern livestock operations employ a large percentage of beef cattle and other livestock fed by commercial feedlot operators. These businesses are often independent contractors which accept livestock (e.g., cattle) from farmers or ranchers at a certain size and age and feed them until they reach a designated size for slaughter. Typically, the farmer or rancher pays the commercial feedlot operator a rental fee for space and care in the feedlot pen(s) and for the associated feeding costs including other operating expenses.
In the feedlot, cattle are grouped in pens according to their feed requirements. Feedlots generally feed thousands of head of cattle or other livestock at various stages of growth. Cattle within a feedlot are physically contained in cattle pens where each pen will typically have a feed bunk to receive and hold feed for the cattle to consume. Ownership of particular cattle in the feedlot is defined by a unique lot number, for example, and the number of cattle in a particular feedlot can vary and may occupy a fraction of one or more cattle pens.
Within a particular pen, cattle are fed substantially the same feed ration (i.e., substantially the same ration type and quantity) and any one feedlot may have a large number of pens to accommodate cattle at various growth stages or that require special feed handling due to illness or malnourishment, for example. That is, livestock may be exposed to disease which can devastate a livestock population and be very costly to the owners. Each year large numbers of livestock are lost due to undetected or late detection of illness.
Considerable human labor is expended in monitoring the health and status of livestock in such feedlots (and other environments) including but not limited to monitoring certain physiological states. For example, a current practice for detection of sick livestock in typical feedlot operations is to employ a so-called “pen rider” who is an individual (e.g., a cowboy) responsible for riding about pens across the feedlot looking for individual livestock (e.g., cattle) that are exhibiting sickly characteristics. Such characteristics might include head down, reduced mobility, reduced alertness and runny noses. In addition to identifying such livestock, an important goal is to ultimately isolate the sick animals from the other livestock in the pen to reduce the risk of spreading any sickness and for treating the sick animals. Of course, as with any human centric activity, issues arise with respect to availability (i.e., finding enough capable workers to fill the need), effectiveness, consistency, speed, accuracy and a variety of working conditions that can make the job difficult for humans.
One critical physiological measure of determining livestock health is the core body temperature of the animal which can vary from a normal core body temperature due to a variety of conditions. For example, several hours before a cow is in standing heat and most likely to conceive, the core body temperature of the cow rises, or if the cow is sick or under heat stress from ambient conditions this may also cause a rise in temperature of the animal. Conversely, the temperature of the cow may drop shortly before delivery of a calf, or if the cow is experiencing hypothermia and/or if the cow has died.
As such, given that core body temperature is an important indicator of a variety of physiological states, there have been a number of techniques developed to measure temperature of livestock and/or reduce the human factor needed to collect such information. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,984,875, 6,059,733 and 6,099,482 describe an animal temperature system that utilizes ingestible boluses for monitoring physiological parameters of animals. Further, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,865,044 describes a temperature sensing system for cattle that utilizes a transmitter and encoding circuitry mounted on an ear tag which is connected to a temperature-sensing probe placed in the ear canal of the cattle being monitored, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0010390 describes a system for the automated monitoring of livestock and other animals that utilizes an implantable wireless “smart tele-sensor” that can be implanted in the animal which measures and transmits temperature and other parameters (e.g., blood oxygen and heart rate) related to the health and status of the animal being monitored. The transmitted temperature and other parameters are transmitted to human personnel carrying certain receiving devices (e.g., personal hand-operated radios, personal digital assistants or cell phones) to take corrective action and/or an off-site location for monitoring.
As will be appreciated, while a variety of animal temperature monitoring techniques exist the ability to rapidly deploy a complete, practical, efficient and cost effective temperature monitoring system for large-scale commercial livestock operations is beneficial.
Therefore, a need exists for an improved technique for reliably, efficiently and more effectively monitoring the temperature of livestock or other animals in large-scale commercial livestock operations.